DOCUMENT RESUME ED 367 175 FL 021 900 AUTHOR Dogancay, Seran TITLE Turkish Language Reform in a Language Planning Framework: Its Impact on Language Use of Turkish Cypriot High School Students. PUB DATE [93] NOTE 11p.; Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Applied Linguistics (1993). PUB TYPE Reports Research/Technical (143) Speeches/Conference Papers (150) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC01 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Change Strategies; Diachronic Linguistics; Foreign Countries; High Schools; High School Students; *Language Planning; *Language Role; *Linguistic Borrowing; *Public Policy; *Turkish IDENTIFIERS Neologism; *Turkey ABSTRACT Turkish language reform began as a language simplification effort by literary figures of the late 19th century, gathering momentum in the 1920s and 1930s to become a large-scale planning activity to save Turkish from domination by foreign influences. Change in script was easy due to low literacy rates, but purification of the lexicon, by stylistic simplification and lexical modernization, was always controversial. Reformers followed four strategies for finding authentic Turkish substitutes for foreign borrowings. A recent study in two Cyprus high schools investigated language usage in relation to Turkish language reform efforts and to assess results of some of the language-related educational policies. A total of 213 students from English-medium and Turkish-medium classes were surveyed and tested on their knowledge of reform-based Turkish neologisms taken from daily newspapers, and their written compositions were analyzed for language usage. In addition, teachers and administrators were interviewed about their views on teaching and using the Turkish language. Results suggest that although Turkish language reform reshaped the language, it is now a much reduced effort, little reinforced in policyplementation in general and specifically in Cypriot schools. Further language planning is recommended. (MSE) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. *********************************************************************** 1 Turkish Language Reform in a Language Planning Framework: Its Impact on Language Use of Turkish Cypriot High School Students SERAN DOGANC AY The paper presents a brief overview of the Turkish language reform as a language planning case and reports on a study done to examine the current impact of the reform on language policies and language use in the Turkish Cypriot context' . Being an area that is still almost unexplored, the impact of Turkish language reform on issues such as education policies, attitudes towards changes the reform brought into the language, people's usage of their mother tongue, and their lexical preferences, provide a broad range of questions to probe. However, within the scope of this study the focus was on the current policies on teaching Turkish as the mother tongue and the language knowledge and use of the new generations. Turkish Language Reform and Language Planning L,anguage planning (LP) is commonly defined as deliberate intervention in the process of language change. LP concerns itself with a range of activities that can be examined under two broad and related categories: status planning and corpus planning, as originally labeled by Kloss (1969). Status planning focuses on the allocation of functions to varieties of language via authoritative policy making. It concerns itself with decisions regarding which language will be assigned or recognized for which purposes in a country, and the implementation of these decisions. Corpus planning, on the other hand, is concerned with the linguistic code itself, promoting changes in the linguistic structure, the script, the lexicon, styles, and so on, hence seeking to establish 'a model of the good language' (Fishman, 1982). To this status-corpus planning distinction Cooper (1989) adds 'acquisition planning' as a third focus of LP. He defines this as "increasing the number of users-speakers, writers, ' This paper is taken from a doctoral dissertation research done at the School of Education of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104. A complete ver3ion of the dissertation can be obtained from the University of Michigan Dissertation Services, 300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann u S OE AAAAA ENT OF EDUCATION Arbor, Michigan 48106. Tel: 313-761-4700. vERMISSION fO REPRODUCE THIS Othce ot Idnoihonil Research mnd In,,overnent MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC, document NIS been reproduced as Cac"- rece,ved from the person or ordarusaboo uhcenahng fl ',knot changes have been made to Lmorose reproductron quilty 2 Po, row cs op.rftpnittitSd.nthrtdu To THE EDUCATIONAL RESOuAcEs ANSPI mg 11111011100 11111104 11141 tNFORNIAT1ON CENTER (EMI 0105 vow, et fag, 2 listeners, or readers" (p. 33) of a language through promoting its learning. Therefore, an expanded definition of LP as given by Cooper (1989, p. 183) is "deliberate efforts to influence the behavior of others with respect to the acquisition, structure [Kloss' corpus planning], or functional allocation [Kloss' status planning] of their language codes." Government authorized language planning agencies, institutions, or even individuals can initiate LP to solve problems which, though mainly linguistic, usually involve political, national, socio-cultural, economic, and other societal issues. LP decisions are implemented through education and the mass media as the two of the most powerful means by which people can be reached. Language planners can direct their efforts towards several goals (Nahir, 1977, 1984), one of which is language reform. Language reform is defined by Nahir as "the deliberate manipulation of langilage triggered by the need to facilitate language use, often through a simplification of orthography, spelling or lexicon, as well as to serve the underlying political, socio-economical, cultural and ideological tendencies of the community." (1984, p. 113). Perry (1985) adds that language reform is "primarily a sociopolitical, not a linguistic and cultural, process, though its effects remain to color the speech and literature of succeeding generations" (p. 295). Indeed, Turkish language reform which focused on simplification and Turkification of orthography and lexicon, was a sociopolitical lertaking that changed and shaped the path of the Turkish language. Turkish Language Reform (henceforth TLR) was started as a language simplification effort by literary figures of the late eighteenth century. It gathered momentum during the initial periods of the Turkish Republic in the 1920's and 30's, to become a large-scale, governmentally-administered language planning activity which was carried out to save Turkish from the domination of foreign influences. After the adoption of Islamic religion and through language contact with the Arab world, especially under the Ottoman Empire, Turkish was heavily influenced by Arabic and Persian and through extensive borrowing from these languages, it turned into a hybrid of Arabic, Persian and Turkish. The heavily ornate and prestigious Ottoman Turkish the rulers and the elite of the period used in their writing became incomprehensible to the masses. After the 3 collapse of the Empire, however, under the leadership of Kemal Atatark, a new Turkish nation began to form, along with feelings of Turkish nationalism. The new elite wanted to develop a modern, westernized Turkish nation and they needed an authentic Turkish language to unify it. Thus, they set out to carry extensive language planning which consisted of changing the script from Arabic to Latin, and purifying and modernizing the vocabulary. These changes in the language would also aid in the movement towards the West from the Islamic Eastern world. The major LP agency was Turk Dil Kurutnu (the TDK) 'Turkish Language Association', aided by politicians, teachers, other interested people, and supervised by Atatiirk himself. The change in the script was relatively easy due to the very low rate of literacy. The purification (Turkification) of the lexicon, however, has always been surrounded by controversy. During this purification movement, which continued until the 70s, language reformers proposed many new Turkish words to replace foreign borrowings and to create the 'pure Turkish language'. This language renovation attempt has diminished greatly in the recent decades, possibly due to the surrounding controversies and the overriding importance of other sociocultural and political events in the Turkish life. TLR, which Fishman (1971) and Nahir (1977) label as 'a most successful' and 'a most celebrated case of extensive language reform' respectively, can be succinctly summarized in Fishman's words (1971, p.11), The case of Turkish language planning is justifiably well known for the speed and thoroughness with which it pursued modernization Seeking a new [italics original] Turkish identity (in contrast with its old Ottoman-Islamic identity) governmentally sponsored language planning conscientiously and vigorously moved to attain script reform (Roman in place of Arabic script), to attain Europeanization of specialized nomenclatures (rather than the Arabic and Persian loan words hitherto used for learned and cultured purposes), and to attain vernacularization or simplification of vocabulary, grammar, and phraseology for everyday conversational use (discarding the little understood and ornate flourishes patterned